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amended rules of leave of absence. Also to settle their social rank, by giving them the title of "esquire," and gazetting their appointments. The higher the masters can be raised in the scale of society, so much the greater will be their influence and power of effecting good among their pupils and their connections. We cannot expect the natives to look up to, or respect, those whom they see despised and neglected by other European gentlemen.

The authority of a superintendent is much required, to ascertain the characters and efficiency of the different teachers, and promote them accordingly. At present their promotion depends much upon chance, interest, clap-trap, and importunity; and but few approach the standard so eloquently drawn by M. Guizot. "A good schoolmaster ought to be a man who knows much more than he is called upon to teach, that he may teach with intelligence and taste; who is to live in a humble sphere and yet to have a noble and elevated mind, that he may preserve that dignity of sentiment and of deportment, without which he will never obtain the respect and confidence of friends; who possesses a rare mixture of gentleness and firmness; inferior though he be in station to many individuals in the parish, he ought to be obsequious to none; not ignorant of his rights, but thinking much more of his duties; showing to all a good example, and serving to all as a counsellor; not given to change his condition, but satisfied with his situation, because it gives him the power of doing good; and who has made up his mind to live and die in the service of education, which to him is the service of God and of his fellow creatures. To rear masters approaching to such a model is a difficult task; and yet we must succeed in it, or else we have done nothing for elementary instruction."

It has been too much re

The office of a teacher is a holy calling. garded as a matter of commerce, a thing of mere business, with which the head is alone concerned, and which has little or no connection with the heart. But especially does it behove the state to provide, that they to whom the education of the poor of the land is entrusted, shall take the task upon themselves, with a fitting sense of the deep responsibility it involves; shall be fully prepared for their duties; that they shall not only be able to instruct, to convey information to others in the most efficient form, but shall make their calling their pleasure, and find their choicest reward in the good they are effecting. Viewed in its proper light, the function of a teacher assumes a sacred character. Even a heathen poet could feel and assert the impressive truth, “maxima debeter pueris reverentia," a truth to be written on the heart of teachers as well of parents; and, until a class of instructors be called into being, who shall be impressed with this truth to its fullest extent, and shall be even painfully conscious how holy a thing is the soul of a child committed to their care, the great work of national education must be considered as still uncommenced.

I cannot better conclude than by expressing my feeling of the truth of the remark made by the hon. the deputy governor of Bengal, which deserves to be written in letters of gold :-" The moral and intellectual regeneration of India, and not our own personal aggrandizement, is the grand object for which the government of these vast territories has been entrusted to us." HENRY CARRE TUCKER, Bengal Civil Service.

SERMONS FOR CHILDREN, BUT CATECHIZING BETTER. REV. SIR,-In your Journal for the present month, p. 167, your correspondent "N. Y." quotes, apparently with approbation, a remark from a former correspondent's letter:-"Till they are confirmed, the proper instruction of children is by means of catechizing, and not by preaching; and therefore, if they were not to attend sermons till they have been confirmed, I think it would be more correct, as well as more beneficial to them."

Not so thinks the church; and I am unable to reconcile your correspondent's opinion with the following direction given to sponsors, whose charge of the children baptized ceases at confirmation, and therefore the direction applies to both sponsors and children before the latter are confirmed :-"And that he may know these things the better, ye shall call upon him to hear sermons, and chiefly," &c.—Public Baptism of Infants.

If the teaching of the church be attended to, both in the schools and in the pulpit, as I think it ought to be, the "sermons" will be easily understood by young children; but if the "sermons" have scarcely any, or no reference to the church, or if the teaching in the school and that in the pulpit contradict each other, as may be the case, then neither children nor adults will profit much; or grow up in attachment to, grounded upon correct knowledge of, the church or its scriptural doctrines and discipline. I am convinced that there is much soundness in a remark made some time ago by a brother clergyman, that "no sermon ought to be preached in the church, which could be preached in a dissenting meeting house;" in other words, the sermon ought to be what is sometimes called

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Though I have been now for some twenty-four years a sunday school teacher as well as a presbyter, I begin to fear that our sunday school system is not so wise a system as that provided for us by the church, namely, that the children should be publicly taught (catechized) “ upon Sundays and holy-days, after the second lesson at evening prayer, openly in the church; and the children, for that instruction, should be prepared in the week-day school, and by parents, masters, and dames. The sunday school is but a poor, though, in the present state of the church, a necessary substitute for the church system of teaching the children religiously.

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I have always found the publicly catechizing after the second lesson in the afternoon, interesting, I may say instructive, to myself, to the children, and to the congregation, taking as the basis the church catechism or the collect for the day, in conjunction with the epistle or gospel, or both. The subject of catechizing should be also that of the sermon which follows, if there be an afternoon sermon, or the morning sermon; the one treating the subject analytically, the other synthetically.

In a populous manufacturing village, where dissent and professed infidelity abounded, the writer established a sunday school, and conducted it for fourteen years, strictly upon "church principles;" and though

the average number of scholars was 150, he does not recollect that more than some three or four of the scholars after leaving the sunday school, joined the ranks of dissent. He may, if he should have leisure, trouble you some time or other with a short account of his plan. Diocese of St. Asaph, 6th June.

E. E.

VENTILATION OF SCHOOLROOMS.

In a schoolroom built some few years ago, at Over Alderley, in the parish of Alderley, Cheshire, provision was made for ventilation by two circular gratings in a stone floor laid hollow on brick piers, with free admission of air beneath, and by two outlets for foul air in the roof, which is open to the slates the whole way up to the ridge. The room was nevertheless found oppressively and injuriously close when full, especially in the winter season when warmed by an Arnott stove; the walls being too low, not quite eight feet to the wall plate. The committee had thoughts of taking off the roof and raising the walls, when the following plan was tried, which has been found to answer completely both in summer and winter. The crests and two rows of slates were taken off, leaving an opening between the upper edges of the slates on each side nine inches in width, horizontally, the whole length of the roof; the rafters and ridge piece remaining in their places. A piece of finely perforated sheet zinc was then set up, six inches high, vertically on each side, resting upon the slates, about two inches below their upper edges, and nailed to the edges of some pieces of board, which were fastened for this purpose to each pair of rafters. On the upper edge of these pieces of board, there was then laid deal covered with lead, slightly curved, instead of the crests, projecting two inches and a half on each side, beyond the upright sides or walls of perforated zinc. The junction of the zinc and slates was rendered secure with hair mortar. foul air gathered upwards, by the sloping sides of the roof, is thus received at the top in a kind of inverted trough, and escapes through the perforated zinc on each side, the whole length, without any perceptible draft downwards whatsoever.

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The length of the roof is twenty-six feet, divided into two portions by a small belfry in the centre; and the whole cost of the alteration has been £5 4s. 6d.

ON TEACHING ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

REV. SIR, AS you have always shown a willingness to offer the pages of the English Journal of Education for the discussion of subjects connected with school affairs, I am induced to make a few remarks on the teaching of English grammar, and the diversity of opinions existing among teachers on this important branch of education, trusting they

may lead others to state their views thereon, and communicate such information as may give rise to greater uniformity of system and practice than prevails at present.

From the number of works that issue from the press on English grammar, almost every one maintaining a different mode of arrangement, one would be apt to conclude, that the cause lay in the construction of the language itself; but this not being the case, we must attribute it, in the first place, to the want of proper attention to the genius of the language; and in the second, to a disinclination to forsake methods sanctioned by custom, although much labour is lost to the learner, and much learned that he will have to discard, as soon as he is capable of judging for himself.

The chief characteristics of our language are simplicity of structure, and exemption from those artificial additions which render the mastering of other tongues an affair of great difficulty. The nouns have but one case, which is the possessive; and with respect to the verb, the most important part of every language, its changes at most are but six or seven, and these, with the help of eight or nine small verbs, possess a greater degree of perspicuity than could be obtained by more extended inflection; but on no part of our grammar is there such discrepancy of opinion as on this, although, should we concur in teaching the verb as it is, no difference could arise. A verb being defined to be a word which is used to convey ideas of action and being, it naturally follows, that as long as we can use such a word to represent by itself the various conditions required by time, as present, past, and future, so long may we be said to adhere strictly to the definition; but no sooner do we seek assistance from auxiliaries, as they are called, than we form a sentence, and, indeed, according to the old method of conjugating, a sentence containing many parts of speech; as, for instance, "Let him love," for the imperative mood, as it is set forth in many grammars. If, however, we merely take the verb in its simple state, and use the modifications strictly belonging to it, we shall find that it is varied in four ways-number, person, mood, and tense; that of the latter there are only two, the present and past; and with respect to the moods, the infinitive, the indicative, and the imperative, are the only ones that can be said properly to belong to it.

It is true, that of late several grammars have appeared, such as Macculloch's, giving the conjugations of the small verbs in our language; but still there are many that violate its simplicity, by arranging the verb according to the Latin, without a show of reason even on the score of utility. If it cannot be denied, that " I may love," taught in most of our schools as the present of the potential mood, is a sentence consisting of the verb "may" in the indicative mood, combined with the verb "love," in the infinitive, elliptically used, and also that the subjunctive is merely an elliptical mode of expression, it can only be prejudice that leads to the maintaining of a different view of the subject. Those who have been in the habit of teaching grammar, and have adhered to the practice of giving to children the verb arranged according to the Latin, to be learned by heart, will find, by the adoption of a method more consistent with the principles of our language, that

much time will be saved, and a much truer knowledge of grammatical arrangement conveyed, than could be obtained by artificial means.

If it be advisable to conform in the construction of English grammar as much as possible to the Latin, it will be at least consistent to give six cases to the nouns, supplying the place of "case" termination by a preposition; for " by a house" is as much a noun in the ablative case, as may love" is a verb in the potential mood.

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It is now about four centuries since our language began to be taught in public schools, and during that time it has increased to a great extent in vigour and copiousness, occasioned principally by the large number of words borrowed from both dead and living languages; on which account the study of etymology has formed a prominent feature in English education; and inasmuch as it throws great light on the meaning of words, and forms an instructive lesson on the formation of language generally, it cannot be too highly esteemed. English grammar also forms a part of the education offered by almost every school in the country, and the benefits to be derived from it as regards the right use of words, independent of its tendency to strengthen the mind, cannot be denied ; but if the ordinary methods used are such as are contained in a large number of works extant, I am much afraid that, instead of aiding a learner, we shall only throw impediments in his way. What, it appears to me, we want is, a grammar drawn up by a body of qualified persons, agreeably to the genius of the language; one that, by common consent, would become the lesson-book of the country, and that would set at rest all differences, both as regards the conjugations of verbs and the number of the parts of speech, as well as every other subject on which disputes have hitherto arisen.

Should these few remarks succeed in eliciting the views of your correspondents with respect to the systems they use in their schools, or elsewhere, it would materially assist in giving an idea of the state of grammatical teaching as carried on at the present time, and the points upon which teachers may be said to agree.

H. B.

A METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING SUMS IN LONG DIVISION CONTAINING A KEY TO THE QUOTIENT AND REMAINDER NOT LIKELY TO BE DETECTED.

TAKE any number for a divisor, say 7402 for example; multiply the divisor by 3, beginning at the left hand, and take that product for the first half of the quotient, which will be 1416; now let the next half consist of figures that will tally with the first half, and make nine, you will then have 14168583 for the quotient, which, multiplied by the divisor 7042, will give you 104875851366 for a dividend. Subtract the sum of the figures in the divisor from the divisor (7402-7+4+2 =7389) for a remainder, which add to the dividend.

To find the Quotient.-Multiply the divisor by 3, beginning at the left hand, and you will have the first half of the quotient, the other figures must tally and make nine.

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